The Bottom Line

About 20 countries have announced suspension of funding to UNRWA, the agency that has been providing services to Palestinian refugees since 1950.

The official reason for the suspension was Israel’s accusation that a dozen UNRWA employees in Gaza had participated in the October 7 Hamas attacks.

To understand the potential consequences of undermining UNRWA – especially amid a humanitarian catastrophe – host Steve Clemons speaks with Leila Hilal, a former adviser to the UNRWA commissioner-general, and Anne Irfan, lecturer at University College London and author of Refuge and Resistance: Palestinians and the International Refugee System.

The United States' support for Israel’s war on Gaza makes the country look ineffectual and hypocritical to the rest of the world, according to Harvard University professor Stephen Walt, co-author of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.

Walt tells host Steve Clemons that Israel and the US-Israel relationship have changed over the decades, but US President Joe Biden is holding on to a view of Israel formed in the West in the 1970s.

By rejecting a ceasefire, the US looks like it "encourages conflict" instead of being a peacemaker, Walt argues, especially since Israel has no political strategy for resolving the Palestinian question.

American voters feel “impotent and hopeless” as they approach an election where the main choices are a “neo-fascist Pied Piper” (Donald Trump) or “the war criminals of the Democratic Party”, argues independent presidential candidate Cornel West.

West, one of the United States’s pre-eminent philosophers and justice activists, tells host Steve Clemons that President Joe Biden is enabling Israeli genocide and that Israel cannot be secure if “precious Jewish security and safety is predicated on the domination of precious Palestinians”.

West argues that recent talk of a two-state solution is “subterfuge – a refusal to deal with the 700,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank”.

Actions speak louder than words, so journalists should conclude that Israel’s war on Gaza is proceeding exactly as the Biden administration likes, argues Jeremy Scahill, one of the co-founders of the independent news website The Intercept.

Scahill tells host Steve Clemons that the United States offers political, legal, diplomatic and military support for Israel’s scorched-earth campaign, while some officials have voiced concern for Palestinian lives.

Scahill argues that even if Hamas did not exist, Israel would face armed resistance because, over the decades, Palestinians have been sent the message that diplomacy would not work and Israel would not treat them as human beings.

President Joe Biden’s failure to demonstrate the same regard and sympathy for Palestinian suffering as he has shown Israel has turned the United States into “Israel’s lawyer,” says former US State Department official Aaron David Miller.

Miller tells host Steve Clemons that Israel has lost the Western perception of being David in the story of “David v Goliath,” and its image will be further damaged the more its people veer to the right.

US officials “don't have any better answers right now than the Israelis do”, Miller says, adding that there will be no “open breach” in relations with the Netanyahu government.

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Israel waged 15 wars against Gaza in the last 75 years, and all failed to resolve the core issues, says former French diplomat Jean-Pierre Filiu, professor of Middle East Studies at Sciences Po.

Filiu tells host Steve Clemons that Gaza’s rich history as a trading post connecting Africa and Asia goes back 4,000 years. The way Israel has cut it off from the world “goes against its history and the nature of its people”.

He says Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s heritage sites - ancient mosques, churches, museums - means that “the memory of humanity is being erased before our eyes.”

By mimicking United States tactics in World War II in Germany and Japan, Israel has made a grave mistake with its war on Gaza, according to retired US Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt.

Kimmitt tells host Steve Clemons that Israel’s tactics - firebombing and “starting new” - have made it unwelcome among the peoples of the region.

Despite Israel’s assassination of a top Hamas commander in Lebanon and disruption of shipping routes in the Red Sea, the US is less concerned about regional instability than it was in October. The situation “has not hit US red lines,” he says.

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David Frum, staff writer for The Atlantic magazine and a pro-Israel supporter, tells host Steve Clemons that Israel and the United States should “avoid solution-ism” for the Palestinians and focus on day-to-day necessities, like food and water.

The way Israel has responded to the Hamas attack of October 7 was “inevitable”, Frum says, adding that “Israel has never been allowed this much scope to act”, by the US, United Kingdom and European Union.

Join this wide-ranging conversation on the internal debates within Israeli society, and how Israel envisions the future of the region, including rapprochement with Saudi Arabia.

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In the evangelical Christian worldview, the 1948 creation of Israel was a fulfilment of Biblical prophecy and the Palestinians are either “non-existent” or “the enemies of God, because they are the enemies of the State of Israel”, explains Palestinian human rights defender Jonathan Kuttab.

Kuttab tells host Steve Clemons that believers of this interpretation of holy scripture do not care about international law or catastrophic war in the region. “They say, ‘Bring it on. That’s the End Times. That’s the Second Coming. That’s wonderful.’”

And if 30 percent of Americans hold these beliefs, what is the impact on US policy on Palestine and Israel?

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“No national liberation movement in history is based on what its enemy wants,” says the former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad.

For the Palestinian Authority to have any legitimacy in the eyes of the Palestinian people, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) would have to expand its membership to include Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Fayyad tells host Steve Clemons.

Without achieving a "national consensus", the Palestinian Authority is in no position to rule the Gaza Strip when Israel's war on Gaza ends, Fayyad says. Otherwise, the United States' hopes for a “revitalised” Palestinian leadership are pointless.

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